Phylogenetic reconstruction of Bantu kinship challenges Main Sequence Theory of human social evolution.

ABSTRACT: Kinship provides the fundamental structure of human society: descent determines the inheritance pattern between generations, whereas residence rules govern the location a couple moves to after they marry. In turn, descent and residence patterns determine other key relationships such as alliance, trade, and marriage partners. Hunter-gatherer kinship patterns are viewed as flexible, whereas agricultural societies are thought to have developed much more stable kinship patterns as they expanded during the Holocene. Among the Bantu farmers of sub-Saharan Africa, the ancestral kinship patterns present at the beginning of the expansion are hotly contested, with some arguing for matrilineal and matrilocal patterns, whereas others maintain that any kind of lineality or sex-biased dispersal only eme

SUBMITTER: Opie C 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC4267395 | biostudies-literature | 2014 Dec

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature